Was she really cucking Louis XVI?

wtf i love the sun king now

Louis XVI didn't usually pull stuff like this but he got mega butthurt by Beaumarchais after being manipulated into approving the subversive Le Mariage de Figaro for performance, then finding out Beaumarchais was still bitching about him in letters to friends. So he sent Beaumarchais to a pirison for wayward youths (aka sent misbehaving children or women who wouldn't subscribe to social norms) for a week to humiliate him, because the punishment in that prison was spanking.

It's good to be king.

french victimhood fantasies

I wouldn't say there was that in her intentions, but it remains that she was persuaded the King to pactize with the league himself with the Austrians, and her brother who was the emperor of the HRE, culminating in the fuite à Varennes.
It was the catalys for Louis XVI being branded a traitor, being executed, and therefore bringing Austria into a war against France, and then the whole of Europe too.
Who knows, maybe Louis would've have that idea on his own, but Marie-Antoinette had been the one historically to have urged him to ally with Austria, and get himself hated.

>it remains that she was persuaded the King to pactize with the league himself with the Austrians, and her brother who was the emperor of the HRE, culminating in the fuite à Varennes.

I have to disagree that the flight to Varennes was the culmination of an alliance with Austria, or that it was Marie Antoinette's doing that they fled Paris. The flight to Montmedy was the result of increasing internal violence and unrest within France, particularly in Paris, which persuaded Louis XVI that he and the family had to flee the city for a fortified, royalist-based stronghold in order to regain control over the country.

>Louis XVI being branded a traitor, being executed, and therefore bringing Austria into a war against France

But Austria went to war against France while Louis XVI was still alive, and it was Louis XVI who initially threatened Austria when he made the declaration in late 1791 that any European power which harbored an emigre army would be considered an enemy of France. He even wrote to Marie Antoinette's brother saying he would declare war on Austria if the troops were not disbanded.

instead of throwing a fuss he should have just deposed the king

No more than Josephine cucked Napoleon

Louis XVI was a fag

that don't say anything

Nah, just super socially awkward and had some penis dysfunction.

Yeah but probably not with her son.

>had some penis dysfunction
He had phimosis.After circumcision he became horny as fuck

I don't think he ever went through with circumcision. The possibility of surgery was discussed in Marie Antoinette & the Austrian ambassador's letters to Maria Theresa, but the subject was dropped according to Marie Antoinette's letters and his hunting records. I think that if he had, there would have had to have been a break in his hunting or Marie Antoinette/ambassador reporting it to Maria Theresa.

According to Marie Antoinette's brother, Louis XVI confided in him

>He has strong, well-conditioned erections; he introduces the member, stays there without moving for perhaps two minutes, withdraws without ejaculating but still erect, and stays good night; this is incomprehensible because with all that he sometimes has nightly emissions, but once in place and going at it, never, and he is satisfied; he says plainly that he does it all purely from a sense of duty but never for pleasure.

After her brother's visit, they began having 'normal' sex and a few months later she was finally pregnant. She was pregnant fairly consistently after that until the birth of their last child.

IMO a lot of the couple's sexual dysfunction was related to a combination of their initial awkwardness towards each other, Louis XVI's overall awkwardness with intimacy and the public nature of court (he refused to visit her bedchamber until a private passage between them could be built, since he didn't want people seeing him going towards her chamber and knowing they were going to try to fuck) as well as Marie Antoinette's wilder years between 1775-1777 that led to the couple living more or less apart for some time.

I also read a theory that suggests Marie Antoinette may have had... I can't remember the name, but it's a condition where your vagina is so tight that it makes insertions and sex physically painful. I'll go check out that biography I remember reading it in to see if they actually had evidence or if they were just throwing it out there.

Wew good (weird) history post user

Still looking in that book but here's a ditty published in a pamphlet about their sex problems:

Everyone wonders though they don't say it,
Can the king do it or can he not do it?
The poor little queen's in a state of despair.
Tra la la.

Some say he can't get it up,
Some say that he can't get it in.
Must be he's all cocked up.
Tra la la.

That's not where the problem lies,
The royal clitoris replies.
It's that naught therein but water lies.
Tra la la.

Some quotes related to the possibility of a penis defect and their sex life in general.

In 1770 Louis XV had renowned surgeon La Martiniere examine Louis XVI (Louis-Auguste at the time). The Austrian Ambassador Mercy wrote "He states that the prince has absolutely no natural defect that could prevent the consummation of his marriage." In 1772, he wrote again: "He knew with certainty that no physical obstacle prevented consummation."

Mercy mentions the possibility of a "minor operation of no great concern" in early 1772 and in other letters, usually in response to Maria Theresa demanding some explanation be found and putting all the fault on Louis, with both the ambassador and Marie Antoinette vaguely mentioning the surgery possibility over the next 2 years. In 1774 the ambassador wrote again to her: "Insofar as there can be any evidence in such cases, we cannot help but suspect that there exists no physical obstacle, and that purely non-physical causes are delaying the complete consummation of Monsieur le dauphin's marriage."

Louis XVI had his personal physician come for a private session solely about the ability to consummate, and he judged that the failure to consummate was related to "bashfulness, lack of self-confidence, an aloof temperament, and late development."

However the potential for the operation was pushed again and again, and Mercy claimed that there was a "fixed date" for the surgery in the fall of 1775. But then in January 1776, a complete reversal. Louis XVI called in a specialist from Paris, and Marie Antoinette wrote "He said more or less the same thing as [the other physicians], that an operation isn't necessary and that there was every hope without one."

Louis Auguste did not even know what proper sex was. Louis XV wrote in May of 1770 that Louis-Auguste was "impatient to see her and for it all to be over with, although he does not yet know what he will have to do when it comes down to it."

1/?? idk

Adding to Louis-Auguste literally not knowing what proper fucking was, Marie Antoinette was 14 but physically underdeveloped. She had only just started her period which was notoriously unreliable still, and Louis XV wrote that she was "quite young, still a child really."

In November 1772 Louis-Auguste told Louis XV that "he had made attempts to consummate his marriage, but was always stopped by painful sensations" and that the success re: consummation was "more marked than before" but that they "both felt some pain and it is still a thorny matter." In July 1773, Marie Antoinette wrote to her mother "I can tell my dear mamma and her alone that we have made great progress and that I believe the marriage consummated, although not in the case of being pregnant."

Ahh okay, here we are in the book regarding the possibility of Marie Antoinette's having extreme tightness. So there is no specific evidence, but conjecture from this author based on the fact that Ambassador Mercy compared the case of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette with Louis XV's father, who had to wait 6 months before bedding his bride due to "the narrowness of the passage." So it is Mercy suggesting that perhaps this was a similar case.

A bit unrealistic

You didn't love him before?

holy shit that's funny

all i knew about him was that he didn't fuck this qt and that he was in the 48 rules of power

Oh well then you know clearly more than me.
Thanks for those bonus facts!

this is one of the illustrations published about them in, I think, the 1780s. Whomp whomp.

forgot image

Wasn't she actually a lesbian?

Those were mainly the consequence idle gossip thrown at her for spending too much of her time with friends.
Fun fact though, the reason for which we call a lover in French a "Jules" stem from this gossip though.
>En effet, Yolande de Polastron était proche de la reine Marie Antoinette. Trop proche même au goût du peuple, qui lui prêtait une relation plus qu’amicale avec la reine. Cette confidente intime était l’épouse du comte Jules de Polignac et les proches du roi l’aurait donc désignée par le prénom de son mari pour éviter de prêter une relation homosexuelle à la reine.
>Plutôt que de dire que la reine était au plumard avec Yolande, on disait donc qu’elle était avec son Jules.
Indeed, Yvonne de Polastron was close to Marie Antoinette. Too close even for the liking of the people, who thought of it as more than a amicable relationship. This confidant was the wife of Jules de Polignac, and those close to the king, would therefore refer to her by the name of her husband, rather than lend the queen a homosexual relationship.
Rather than saying that the queen was Yolande's lover, it was said that she was her "Jules".

>csq besoin de "Jules" féminine

No. But she, like a lot of women in that era, wrote in very flowery language and wrote in a way that we would today consider "romantically" to her friends (men and women) so some people have latched onto that as her being a lesbian. For example she wrote "I kiss you hard," "I embrace you tenderly," "Nothing but death can make me stop loving you," etc.

That seems quite beyond the rules of propriety for that age of History

Nope, not really! If you take a look at personal letters, particularly women's letters but it wasn't necessarily exclusive to women, from that era they are chock full of dramatic and flowerly phrases that we would today consider exclusive to lovers/romance (in the sense of "let's have sex/that kind of relationship" romance) but in the context of the time, these expressions were a normal part of intimate friendships (I think a lot of historians coin them 'romantic friendships') where you expressed everything with a high level of in intensity and devotion.

It's not just Marie Antoinette. Many women from that time period in the same way. You can find many instances of phrases like "my heart," "I kiss you tenderly," "I love you with all my heart," etc, written by women to friends.